Michel Hafner

The DI definition is not set in stone, like the technology it is in flux: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_intermediate: Although originally used to describe a process that started with film scanning and ended with film recording, digital intermediate is also used to describe color grading and final mastering even when a digital camera is used as the image source and/or when the final movie is not output to film. http://www.surrealroad.com/research/digita...ediate-primer/: So what is a Digital Intermediate? At the moment, precise definitions vary, or are subject to strong argument. I would suggest the following definition: a “digital intermediate” is the process of creating motion picture content using digital means, regardless of the source or destination material. See also http://www.lightillusion.com/zippdf/di-guide.pdf

His point is the apparent contradiction, perhaps?

Historically yes, but as it is used now by many it also means a digital master element compiled from various sources and the source for various versions of the film derived from it. In that sense it's still intermediate.

No. DI as a term means that a digital master element is made from which everything is derived, film prints, digital cinema exhibition masters, HD and SD video masters, archival masters (digital and on film). It no longer implies a film source or necessarily a film out, which is still the norm, though.

If the video processing in the monitor has hardware that does inverse pulldown properly you get the original frames back from film sources with correct pulldown created by converting 1080p24 to 1080i60. There is no loss of detail unless the 1080i60 is already filtered. The bob and weave and motion adaptive interpolation does not apply. It applies only when the hardware can not do inverse pulldown or the source has no detectable pulldown in it (not film based material or with wrong pulldown). Playback from Blu Ray is safe in this regard as it's native 24 fps progressive or if desired with correct pulldown converted to 1080i60 which most new monitors should convert correctly to 1080p60 without loss of detail.

Are there also results available for different projectors? Are you saying even now no TVs use proper inverse pulldown when getting film based material with correct pulldown?

Not really possible since I don't watch my stuff on a TV in the first place.

The best Blu Rays seem to be close to what you can do with the format. High bit rate AVC/VC-1 with average of 25 and more and peaks above 40 Mbit/s looks transparent to the 8 bit 4:2:0 master in most cases and with normal viewing conditions. To improve further on image quality the Blu Ray parameters have to be changed and displays have to improve. Going 10 bit and 4:2:2/4:4:4 plus cinema color gamut would be the next logical step, together with doubling the bandwidth of the system.

Are you trolling now every thread where I post? Sorry, I won't play along.

You can see DVD versus HD-DVD here: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread....ht=transformers The Blu Ray looks practically the same. If you have very different colors between the DVD and the Blu Ray on your equipment I suggest you check where your equipment goes wrong. It does not show what's on the disk. Concerning motion there should be no difference either. The DVD and the Blu Ray have 24 fps video which is output depending on what player you have, what display you have and how they cooperate. You might see 24fps at a multiple of 24 Hz, or 60HZ with pulldown, or maybe you watch on 50HZ PAL equipment? Or use 120Hz and frame interpolation? Whatever, Blu Ray as a system has no motion issues with 24fps material from film sources. Your specific player and display combination may well have though. Without specific details how you watch your stuff it's pointless to try to diagnose this further.

I don't even know what that's supposed to mean, looking good. One man's good is another man's crap. The relevant question is if the Blu Ray is a well compressed version close in quality to the studio HD master tape and if that tape is an accurate version of the movie with a look as intended by the film makers for the HD medium. If "Transformers" Blu Ray makes someone puke it's not a Blu Ray problem. The disc is well compressed and the colors, contrast and sharpness are what Bay wanted them to be. The disk has neither excessive sharpening applied nor can I see anything else wrong with it in the technical department. Wanna bet digital projections in 2K of the film looked quite close? The look of this film is what it is. Before judging disks it's a must to make sure that one's display chain is accurate and following technical standards for correct color, gamma and grayscale and all digital filtering gimmicks are turned off (no sharpening, no noise reduction, no frame interpolation...) or you are not seeing what was put on the disk in the first place. And what was put there has all kinds of visual styles and signatures, superb eye candy for some, yucky garbage to others. Never trust a display you have not calibrated yourself or at least checked with reference material. Good looking Blu rays? There are lots and lots. Blade Runner Predator Close Encounters of the Third Kind Shoot Em Up The Tudors The Other Boleyn Girl Cool Hand Luke Black Narcissus Baraka (mostly) Atonement Ratatouille WALL-E Der Fuchs und das Mädchen The Prestige Apocalypto Matrix 1-3 ...

First, where is that Jurassic Park Blu Ray for sale??? Has not been released so far, has it? Second, Blu Ray has no specific look different from 8 bit HD at 4:2:0. If you hate Blu Ray you hate HD of that kind in general no matter what is put on it. It's not film, it's video. But it can look quite film-like if that's intended... Maybe you don't hate Blu Ray but that specific transfer, whatever it was?

Strange. The regular 2K DLP version looked ok. Why would they project 2 2Ks on top of each other and then process the source to death when the picture is so bright that all manipulations stick out like a sore thumb? Makes no sense, does it?

I haven't seen these myself yet but Neverland from DI looked already grain filtered to me in the cinema, Crash is a 'low bit rate' MPEG2 compressed disk that got a lot of flack for compression issues and Ocean's Thirteen looks apparently weird anyway because Soderbergh went for a special look. That does not mean that all of these can not also have grain aliasing issues as well.

If you live in US you can see a RED shot film right now at the cinema: My Bloody Valentine 3-D At Sundance several are playing as well. I see, you are in Australia. At the latest "Knowing" should do the trick for you. From 'your' Alex Proyas.

I don't know what this has got to do with my reply here or the 16mm question, but my point there was that using the IP instead of the ON loses spatial resolution which it does. There are other considerations though that can favour an IP. What are you talking about? CRT based telecines versus CCD? What has this got to do with my reply here? The best transfers I have seen are direct from DI, directly computer generated material or direct from ON with digital grading of the HD. Direct from IP can look very good as well. Incorrect grading and digital manipulations messing with the integrity of the images are not so much a technical issue but a matter of policies and who calls the shots. There are prints and prints. I don't like standard prints and I don't like current cinema digital projection too much (not enough contrast, blacks too high, rooms with too much ambient light, 2K too course to sit close). I prefer watching in 1080p at home with super high contrast in a completely light controlled room. Or EK prints in light controlled screening rooms (the reference). Later on I hope 4K projectors with more contrast become standard in cinemas.

None. DVD is not used for mastering Blu Ray. If you mean SD masters, very few, if we talk about feature films. HD transfers are used in almost all cases. But their age and quality varies greatly, going from old transfers made on CRT based telecines to direct digital mastering directly from DI files.

Can you give some examples?

Maybe no the current model. But the coming models are what Nolan looks for. He could not shoot all in IMAX because of the noisy and unwieldy cameras (among other things). Imagine a Red 2 with 9K sensors and more dynamic range and he can shoot all of this film with better resolution than 35mm approaching an IMAX look and no need for any DRM filtering tricks if he shoots some IMAX as well.

I found the IMAX shots on the BD to be far better looking than the 35mm parts. Not so much because of the additional detail but because they looked less processed and digital. The 35mm parts look way too electronic to me (frequent white halos/ringing around high contrast edges, pasty skin, an overprocessed digital look I don't like at all). That from a 3.5m wide screen in 1080p. I liked the 2K cinema version on DLP much more for the 35mm parts.

That's not what I meant. If cameras do genuine temporal filtering to get rid of random noise they have to filter along motion trajectories or they are comparing apples and oranges and filtering artifacts are unavoidable. To do that in non real time is difficult enough. I don't see how this is supposed to work in real time and be effective and free of obvious artifacts and indeed genuine temporal filtering. ??

How do these cameras even know in real time what the correct motion from frame to frame is?

If they did it would be a reason for me to not use this camera. Temporal real time noise filtering in the master source, no thanks.

Soderbergh's Che starts today in limited release in US cinemas.

On-Off only compares top white to black, measured separately. No direct connection to actual intra image contrast in a given image. For intra image contrast there is another measure, the ANSI contrast test pattern (chess board). But it's only an exampe for one specific image and gives a rough idea how well or badly a display or projector can avoid the spilling of brighter image parts into darker image parts. On-Off and ANSI together are a good indicator of what kind of contrast performance you can expect from a display and what kind of images it will excell with concerning contrast. Since film is overall a rather dark medium low blacks are a must for good image depth with all kinds of material. The bit depth of the source is not directly related to this. It will only limit the resolution between top white and black. There must be enough bits so between black plus one and top white there is not too much banding going on. That black plus one to white range can have a contrast of 300:1 or 500:1 or 1000:1, or 2500:1, or 5000:1. The one step to black can raise this to 30000:1 or more. With perfect black it's infinity. Some actual measurable intra image contrast examples are listed here: http://www.cine4home.de/Specials/ANSIvsONOFF/ANSIvsONOFF.htm (sorry, German only) The top measured intra image contrast was 1900:1. Attention. It's a common mistake to conclude from this that On-Off of > 2500:1 or some other number is pointless since we are limited to 2000:1 anyway. This is not the case. To get a sufficient intra image contrast with dark images On-Off must be high, and for superior depth with dark images it must be very high indeed.